Purchased May 2013 for $800 - damaged front guard (as can be seen in the pics), engine not running. I suspected a blown head gasket and did not turn the engine over as it was full of oil, which I thought was odd. It had also apparently been sitting for 6 months.

Pretty stock with AC - possibly added at a later date but I'm not sure as it could have been a factory fit - it's sometimes hard to tell.

Last August I got time to pull it down after I got a few things out of the way. When I drained the engine this is what we found:

And still going:

Got about 15L of water and oil out of this little engine - it was definitely full!

This is how the cylinders looked:

We found a small amount of surface rust on the bores, some emery paper cleaned it up. My concern here was that this could have dropped compression beyond the engine being any good. It was punting time so the engine went back together with new head gaskets.

This is why it was full of water:

A welch plug dropped out - it would have emptied the radiator contents pretty quickly into the engine! If the previous owner tried to fill the radiator it wouldn't have lasted very long. Painful to think that with a bit of investigation after it happened this thing would still be running possibly with the previous owner still at the wheel...

It took me about 7 months from putting the engine on a stand, stripping it down, cleaning it up, dad fitted some threaded bungs to replace the welch plugs, fit new HGs to getting it off the stand. Then about a week from the shed floor to the engine bay to this:

From here it was consuming me when I wasn't working on it. I got a night in the shed and three hours later it was trying to fire up

Two days later I got a day on it - turned out it was missing a fuse in the ignition position (I now remember pinching it and some others for another job), but the starter relay powered it up, hence why it fired and died, fired and died. I could toggle the starter circuit to run without the starter engaging. Painful and it ran like crap. Lots of blue smoke that filled the shed, then the yard when I pushed it outside... It wasn't looking good.

It turned out to be running on two cylinders too. Some valve clearance adjustments were made and it was back on 4 pots. More blue smoke.

But that cleared up! I wasn't expecting so much smoke as we did oil the bores after cleaning everything up - too much for just assembly oil so suspected oil rings were shot - not the case! So now I have a healthy running EA81, no smoke and a goer.

Now to clean it up, replace the waterpump that's leaking, replace the ball joints, engine and gearbox mounts, rear diff seals and the wheels then it should be right for a road worthy. I'll also change the oil filter, dump the oil that's in it and repeat this twice with used but clean oil before finally fitting a new fresh filter and fresh oil.

Can't wait!

After this I want to keep it neat and relatively stock. If a 2 inch lift happened to come my way it might get lifted. I'm also thinking of adding fuel injection by adapting a later model's EFI system to the engine as I've got all the bits wasting away in storage - might as well play with it for a bit of fun. It should go well. Placing the injectors will be the tricky bit! It's all reversible so it should be fine - and is still stock enough not to need an engineer's certificate.

I would love a WRX halfcut to make a total sleeper of this, but that just a dream at the moment! Plus I'm not too keen on the fuel bill associated with that setup... but that fun is alluring!

Most of these parts are for the rear end - new rear bearings, new slave cylinders, new rear shocks. The front end gets a new set of ball joints (once I can un-weld the rusted in old units), oil filter and air filter.

Here's some of the work done on the rear end:

^ Rear diff, drive shafts, and bearings removed. There's a trick to doing the rear bearings - many mechanics screw it up and only replace the bearing that can be removed when you remove the hub. And you need a special tool to remove the inner bolt, so I made one:

Here's all the work done on the RH side, home made tool under the hub - brakes gravity bled, first time I've done them like this and it's worked a treat:

That tool has replaced a number of bearings now - it makes the job so much easier - and it doesn't damage the nut which seems to be made of a soft metal as it easily deforms if you use a punch and hammer to remove it. The tool takes much more of a beating!

Once the rear diff and drive shafts were back in I got Redback fired up, moved and photographed:

These are the rims I'll be running with - I really like the black on red look! I do have to swap that chrome bar out front - it's not a tow point, but it's bent like this as a result of being used as one.

I'll need to give it a cut and polish to keep the shine you see in the above pic - I sprayed it with water before I took this pic to make the paint look good.

Next is to get those bloody ball joints out - hoping to borrow a mate's tool for the job, otherwise I'll get my own. I've also got to strip and spray the undamaged guard, I'm now beyond the point of colour matching so I'll just grab a red can of paint and go from there, I might end up pulling a white guard off another parts bomb (wagon) so it's completely different rather than "almost got it"... We'll see. Ultimately I'd like to paint the whole vehicle but do it properly - all glass out. After seeing two new vehicles with matt colours - a VW golf in matt army green and an Audi A3 or 4 in matt sky blue - I'd like to respray in matt red like an urban assault vehicle

After all of that I will need to machine the drums as there's a huge step in both of them, a good mill or two; give the whole thing a good wash and detail then hopefully book it in for a successful RWC check...

Well I've since given this ute a tune up and a wash - 6 hours of spraying degreaser then giving it a high pressure wash over and over resulted in one very clean brumby. You wouldn't believe the mess that came off this vehicle even though it seemed pretty clean to begin with!

I've also found that I need a new windscreen - on the trailer commute to my mate's for the wash it's copped a stone (I presume) right in the view of the driver. Bugger.

I've now got Ruby Scoo back on the road so I can ease up on the money being "poured" into this ute and make sure it's completely right before it goes in for RWC.

I fear that removing the windscreen will open up a whole new can of worms that I don't really want to deal with right now. The plan was to do what ever was needed once I was ready for a complete respray...

Still can't wait to get it on the road. It starts very easily since being tuned and runs really well!

I've had the windscreen out, treated the minimal amount of rust in there, then primed an sealed it back up and threw a new windscreen rubber seal at it as well.

Redback went in for her RWC, came back with three things - indicator not working (they were!); wipers not operating properly; washers not working and a sloppy front uni joint on the tailshaft.

So I'd got excited and didn't do up one of the wiper retainer bolts and forgot to put water in the washer bottle. Total rookie mistakes! I replaced both uni joints while I was at it.

My package arrived in the mail, so getting a later appointment with VicRoads (who make it quite a process these days ) turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Redback has now been registered since the start of September: Plates *just* fitted in this pic:

Out and about near work:

In the back yard posing:

Hanging out with her younger sister:

We've ironed out a couple of bugs, the main one being a blocked exhaust. Travelling at 60km/h almost flat footed wasn't much fun. I was lucky to have a manifold on a parts bomb that fitted without any mods, now there's free acceleration and cruising is good once again!

Current bug is the alternator, just chewed up its second one, but this could be down to the second hand part we used - you guessed it, off a parts bomb too.

Dad's currently borrowing her, so I'm back on the 50cc two wheels to work mode of transport until I get the mighty brumby back. I really enjoyed driving it while I had it. I'm looking forward to getting her back too :D

Not much else happening other than keeping it ticking over. I'm super keen to unleash some coin on a few luxuries such as cruise and remote central locking but I need to keep some coin in the bank :(

Thanks mate! A lot has happened since I last posted, most of it being in the last 4 days...

Got a "new to me" bullbar for a price I couldn't leave. I've always wanted a 5 poster and I've seen neat ones on Brumbys before, I think this one fits the bill well:

This was fitted at a good time - mum wrote off her car with a roo. She was devastated, long story short she won it (a 2003 toyota corolla ascent) in a raffle and had put on over 450k km since having it. We've replaced a gearbox (factory leak), one set of spark plugs, a single coil pack and recently in the last 12 months a set of front struts. Mum and Dad have been borrowing Redback (much to mum's delight), so the bar gave mum a bit of confidence driving at night again (or in our area in general anyway).

And this week, I managed to get close to Redback again. The only positive thing to come out of Mum's car being written off is that I got the after market cruise thrown my way and dad fitted an LED lightbar from Mum's car (not fussed on this one, it's not overly powerful).

So after a day of stuffing around with some new connectors, wrapping wiring, making brackets and getting confused with a wiring issue I now have sorted the cruise control. I've used the AP60 kit, usually retails for between $230 and $250, about the same price as the "base" level speeding fine in Vic.

Here's a few pics of how things have been fitted; first up is the actuator mounting position and the cable fitment:

Speed sensor pickup - the mount took some time and stuffing around to get it right. I prefer to mount off the gearbox so the sensor moves with any drivetrain movement eliminating the sensor rubbing on the magnets:

And the all important control pad which is also mounted on a tin plate that's been shaped to fit as best I could behind the little coin tray/storage bucket thing in the dash on the right hand side:

Then I pulled this from the parts bomb the next day:

Cleaned that up, put a new set of boots on and fitted it to Redback. To get the rack in you need to typically drill out the four spot welds that hold the jacking plate to the engine crossmember:

The brake booster vacuum pick up gets in the way of the PS pump, so I relocated it to the other side of the manifold and extend the hose to fit. The bung from the other side is moved to plug this hole. I then had to shave it down to allow the pump to fit without rubbing on the bung or manifold:

And a longer thermostat housing needs to be fitted to clear the rear of the power steering pump:

Here's a dodgy pic of the power steering pump fitted in place - it's hidden pretty well by the air cleaner, the reservoir lid pokes up behind the air cleaner:

This mod transforms the feel of the Brumby - it makes the vehicle feel much lighter than it actually is and now I can throw the vehicle around much easier than previously. The exact same experience I had after fitting PS to Sunnie the Brumby.

Lastly, I checked out some seats from another vehicle to fit as I was pretty keen to swap the original seats out, even though they're not a bad example of MY seats. I came up with a bracket that adapts the Honda Integra (early 90's model I think) seats to the MY rails for a direct bolt in application. Pretty stoked and the seats are awesome, even though the ones I'm using are pretty worn out - I wanted to make sure they would fit and work before I really invested in this mod. Total cost for these seats to be fitted is $15 on 2m of two inch right angle steel. They fitted much better than I thought they would.

Pics to come on that mod - I want a better set of seats for the pics!

It's been a busy few days and an amazing change in some vital areas of a vehilce, you wouldn't think this is the same vehicle going by the feel of how it drives. I also took the time to track down a whistling sound that occurred since putting the bullbar on - turns out it's the mounts for the LED light bar...

A few weekends ago (23/24MAY), I was excited as mum's replaced her old car so I get Redback again - or so I thought! I got about 30km from m&d's and had to pull over for communications between the two vehicles. When I returned to Redback there was a massive pool of oil under her.

I flipped out a bit. Then investigated the issue. Seems that the crank seal had let go but it would "only leak" above a certain rev, but without a tacho I didn't know what this rev limit was. I managed to limp it home to leave there until I could find a weekend to pull the engine and get an oxy torch to heat the crank pulley off. Not happy Jan!

I then came back home to shepp again brumbyless and put up with another two cold weeks commuting on the scooter :(

A couple of months ago I thought I needed an oxy torch to heat the crank pulley as I went to replace this seal and put a kit through the oil pump but couldn't get the pulley off. The bolt was SUPER tight and very difficult to remove with my breaker bar, hand brake, 4th gear (old school, apparently 5th gear wasn't invented back then :P) and chocks still didn't keep the car still - and it was on a set of ramps at the time! Levering behind the pulley did nothing other than start to damage the pulley.

Finally Last weekend I got to sort this issue and everything went very well. Engine out Saturday morning, went to the "Shifting gear" innovation in Australian cars and design in Melbs (Totally see this exhibition if you're thinking of doing it!!). I resealed the oil pump before dinner.

This is one way to do an oil change :P

Sunday saw the pump, front and rear main seals replaced and a new sump gasket made up then fitted.I drove it home that evening and all went well, even with a black cow found in the middle of the road at about 11pm! Glad the MY brakes did an "good enough" job for that one (aka I didn't hit it)!

Still really wanting a "Willy's special" set of extractors :/

And this his how it should be, well, at least when Sunnie the Brumby rocks up :D

And it seems Redback is making more new friends, today she met Tweety:

Of course, Subaru powered:

"Stance" pic:

And a slightly angle to the first pic - very slightly, but who doesn't want to see more of this??

I went for a blart behind the bars on this. My first start wasn't real flash, went to pull out and managed to pull a wheelie for a few metres. It's got a rather touchy throttle compared to full throttle (my scooter!). Beautiful to ride and very responsive in throttle and handling. Attracts A LOT of attention, I've never experienced anything like that before!

A couple of details: VW based Panther Trike, 3 speed auto, Subaru EA81 powered with a mild cam, currently a 38/38 Weber that's about to be swapped out for the tried and tested 32/36 Weber.

I also took Redback to Bunnings today, not really significant but it was still a fun ride, just very different to Tweety! And I confess, I did stalk another Brumby for a bit on the way home. I think I may have a problem...

Wow you have had a few issue's and done a lot of work over the last period, The bulbar looks good I don’t know about Vic but here in NSW they have been deemed illegal here, But in the end it looking really neat little car keep it up. Tweety looks impressive too.

Quick update on Redback. Still cruising. I’ve got a pinging issue that happens just before the thermo fans kick in and it’s worse on a hot day. I replaced the pvc valve and this had a dramatic improvement. I can hear a vacuum sucking sound near the RHS bank but everything checks out. I’m now suspecting the inlet manifold gasket on that head. This would also explain the detonation I’m experiencing - this leak would significantly lean out the mixture.

So that’s on the go do list.

Just before school went back I put a new set of boots on her. Since new boots were needed I decided I was tired of the black rims and had a set of scorpions laying around not doing anything. Here’s the result of that change:

I must admit that at first, I wasn’t entirely sold. With some time, many pics and generally taking in the new look they’ve certainly grown on me! I’ve also noticed better cornering, most likely due to the small side wall of the tire - and the general tyre construction as I’m back on an “all” season road tyre rather than a set of hardened snow tyres from our Mt Hotham days.

And “The Trifecta” with Sunnie the Brumby - I had to share. They’re like my ad-hock version of the Italian job :P